The North American International Auto Show, in residence at Cobo Hall in downtown Detroit until Jan. 23, provides a teachable moment. It turns out, lazy and overfed car companies can lose weight and come out fighting (hello, General Motors). Conversely, a stable of the smartest executives on the planet is no guarantee your company won't stumble into a clearly marked minefield (VW, I'm looking at you).

Other takeaways: It was naive of naysayers to judge an emergent technology such as electric mobility by its previous limitations. They will dine on crows in the coming years. And it's perfectly permissible for national governments to save giant employers in a moment of crisis, because flesh and blood is more important than ideological purity Just don't make it a habit.

Interested? Antagonized? Then read on. Here are my lessons from the Detroit auto show. Automotive engineers have the most beautiful minds: Porsche returned to the show this year after a three-year absence and brought with it the devastating Porsche 918 RSR hybrid race car, which won the annual EyesOn Design award for Best Concept. 

A competition version of the 918 Spyder seen last year, the mid-engine, carbon-chassis 918 RSR marries a fire-spitting 563-hp V8 with two traction motors on the front wheels, providing up to 204 hp of temporary, corner-exiting electric boost. 

The key component is the car's flywheel accumulator, a washer drum-sized device sitting in the cockpit that stores electrical energy mechanically, in a toroid-shaped mass spinning at up to 38,000 rpm. When required, this rotational momentum is converted back into electricity in an elegant display of the first law of thermodynamics.

It would be achievement enough to build such a car, a synthesis of horsepower and computational muscle, a car that dares the limits of physics and mechanical engineering. But to make such a car beautiful? These guys are poets with wrenches.   The Germans are inclined to overreach: At the annual preshow media gathering at Detroit's "Firehouse" on Sunday, Volkswagen Chairman Martin Winterkorn was introduced as "Dr. Professor," as if anyone would doubt he's quite clever. 

But the buzz around the new Passat midsize sedan, to be built in a new $1 billion facility in Chattanooga, Tenn was less than ardent.   The new Passat will sell for $8,000 less the previous model and, frankly, it feels it, with a palpable loss of heft and substance from the door handles to the windshield wipers. The styling is inert, virtually invisible. VW calls the new American Passat "accessible." I think patronizing is more like it.